Matej Posted May 15, 2017 Share Posted May 15, 2017 I was watching TRANTOR "demo". There is huge spaceship sprite at beginning and amazing big soldier sprite during text demo. Now I have this question. How many fonts can be used in one game (320kb,576kb,1088kb). Can we somehow use one charset for one level or screen??? To have huge sprites. Why we doesnt have lot of big sprites games??? There are few... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted May 15, 2017 Share Posted May 15, 2017 Hmmm, Upior: http://translate.google.com/translate?client=tmpg&depth=1&hl=pl&langpair=pl%7Cen&rurl=translate.google.com&u=http://classic-games.pl/upiorna-gra/ http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=3372 or Droga Wojownika: http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=1764 http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=267 maybe also Space Rider (Jetpack & Co.): http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-space-rider_4846.html and a few others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted May 16, 2017 Share Posted May 16, 2017 (edited) Droga Wojownika Space Rider: Jet Pack Company! Are decent the other one, upiornia not so much Edited May 16, 2017 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Adam+ Posted May 16, 2017 Share Posted May 16, 2017 (edited) As most of you probably know, the graphics in Trantor demo is taken from ZX Spectrum game (with the same title). But the guy's animation in this demo looks more like a slideshow (with switching between several prepared pictures) than a "proper" software sprite that could be used in a real A8 game. Edited May 16, 2017 by +Adam+ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilaskey Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 You can have as many character sets as you can fit into RAM, it's just a poke to select the one you want. As far as the giant space ship goes, I wouldn't have thought it was a sprite as such, just a block of redefined text scrolled into view so almost no CPU overhead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 The big [ahem] thing to watch out for is how difficult it is to design a decent game with large sprites... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gorgh Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 actually the spaceship movement in this demo is simply done by display list, and it doesn't take too much CPU cycles, it's simple scroller and can be done by mediocre programmer. The reason why we don't have big sprites in games is because it takes lots of CPU cycles to arrange bitplanes, in other words, when one have background and different sprites at the same time it takes a lot of CPU cycles to put one on another. Having 50 characters in character mode graphics that consist the software sprites is challenging. I think reasonable number of bitplane characters that can be animated in 1 frame is 30-40. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 The big [ahem] thing to watch out for is how difficult it is to design a decent game with large sprites... What about Isis in Dwie Wieze? Controls aren't the best, but the game's got some lovely graphics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 I've Tir-Na-Nog on the 'paused' ( ) conversion bench and that has some good b/w soft-sprites. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fres Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 None of those games seem very fun. Disagree? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
solo/ng Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 (edited) The problem is - if you want to have good performance you have to store (in colour mode) 5x more data for every software sprite frame. For example: source data: object: 16x24 * 16 frames = 4x24 bytes * 16 frames = 1536 bytes then all bit shifted animations to fonts = 1536 * 4 = 6144 bytes ~1.5kb + ~6kb just for one object (if game wont dynamically allocate fonts we could drop the 1.5kb one) edit: Its not a problem if the game would use RAM extension of course. Edited May 17, 2017 by solo/ng Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irgendwer Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 (edited) I wonder nobody mentioned "Stickybear Basketbounce" with a "not-so-small" character and a quite impressive number of moving objects on screen. IMHO a solid game... Edited May 17, 2017 by Irgendwer 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted May 17, 2017 Share Posted May 17, 2017 Irgendwer +1 nice call on the bears! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Adam+ Posted May 18, 2017 Share Posted May 18, 2017 Radical Rupert - not a good game, but probably the highest moving sprite I have seen in an Atari game 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted May 18, 2017 Share Posted May 18, 2017 Big Sprite games could be so boring... ... not 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pajero_pn Posted May 18, 2017 Share Posted May 18, 2017 Only demo https://github.com/lybrown/tiles 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted May 19, 2017 Share Posted May 19, 2017 That Trantor Demo is hokum - they are not sprites, just animations with some scrolling - no masking or anything... sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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